Metal Chalcogenides based Polyaniline Nanocomposites for Supercapacitor Applications

Abstract

This thesis aims to develop a promising material for supercapacitor application in enhancing the cyclic stability, specific capacitance, and energy density of the active electrode material without compromising its power density. This thesis is split into six chapters: Chapter 1: This chapter delivers a brief introduction to supercapacitors, with their different classifications, and explains the mechanism behind electrochemical energy storage. Then a brief background is introduced on the metal chalcogenides, such as metal oxides, metal sulfides, and metal selenides. Later, the different classifications of conducting polymers their explanation in terms of their electrochemical energy storage devices are discussed. Then, the importance of metal chalcogenides composites as to how to surpass their drawbacks as pristine materials is discussed. Metal chalcogenides-based polyaniline nanocomposites were briefly discussed as it now behaves as a promising material for electrochemical energy storage devices with the method of synthesis adapted, its performance on electrochemical energy storage application with its specific capacitance and capacitance retention percentage. Then the motivation of the work done in the thesis is given at the end. Chapter 2: This chapter contains the details of the vanadium oxide/ rGO synthesized by micro explosive thermal disintegration of ammonium peroxovanadate. Then their brief characterization is discussed. During the polyaniline synthesis, the role of dopant was studied in this chapter.The supercapacitive performance for the best composite is studied. Chapter 3: Contains the details of the synthesis methods of Mn3O4-GO nanostructures, their physical electrochemical characterization confirming the presence of the elements. Then the ratio of aniline to precursor was optimized to know which ratio of the material performs the best for electrochemical energy storage in Mn3O4-GO-PANI. To study the performance of the morphology,the polyaniline synthesis method was varied in two ways (polyaniline)